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La existencia de Portugal siempre ha supuesto una dificultad para el desarrollo del nacionalismo español, en tanto que el país lusitano era un obstáculo para la idea de una unidad fronteriza basada en la geografía peninsular. Durante el Romanticismo, numerosos autores abordaron esta problemática a partir de un episodio histórico, el incidente de Madrigal. Pero la primera obra literaria sobre este tema fue El pastelero de Madrigal (1706) de José de Cañizares, muy anterior a la consolidación del nacionalismo, pero que influiría indirectamente en textos como Traidor, inconfeso y mártir de Zorrilla. El presente artículo analiza la idea de Portugal trazada en el drama de Cañizares, lo que nos permite acotar que la imagen ofrecida de ese reino es muy positiva, pero que el punto de vista se articula en todo momento a partir de un protonacionalismo de carácter borbónico que condena toda hostilidad por parte del territorio vecino.

Book review

Montengón is one of the most important Spanish novelists of 18th century, author of novels so representatives of that period as Eusebio or El Rodrigo. El Antenor (1788), narration with mythical nature, is one of his minors novels, and it doesn’t highlight from a literary point of view, but it belongs so much interest to narrow down political believes of his author. We know that it has an antibelicist background, but so far it has not been fully studied or fully specified what this pacifism consist of. In the present work we analyze how in one of the episodes, relative to the adventures of the protagonist in the temple of Diana, in Tauride, Montengón manages to articulate a political allegory in which complain a religious fanaticism cause he consider it an important obstacle to the pacific coexistence between people.

Book review

This work is a critical edition of a short novel published in 1805 by Vicente Rodríguez de Arellano in his collection El Decamerón español: El negro Juan Latino. This text is of special interest because there are no doubts about its originality, unlike most works in this compilation. This fact allows us to rate its author not only as a translator of foreign pieces, but as an original writer in the Novel genre, which was scarcely developed in the 19th century’s Spain until the decade of 1830. Also, the text is of particular relevance as an early instance of historical narrative well before that genre was introduced by Scott’s influence in Spain. That novel stands out in its adjustment to the sensibility of the beginnings of Spanish 19th century of a certain topic which was taken from Diego Jiménez de Enciso’s baroque play Comedia famosa de Juan Latino. Comparison of this two pieces will reveal that, although Rodríguez de Arellano uses the same character, the same history and the same motifs, he imprints it with a different meaning in the spirit of Rousseau’s philosophy, which would so much influence Romanticism, especially in both education and the most irrational side of the human being.

Book review